The Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources (PCRWR) has recently released an updated list of the bottled water brands available in Pakistan that tested positive for harmful contaminants that pose serious health risks, including cancer, kidney disease, heart disease, high blood pressure, and gastrointestinal infections, such as cholera.

Study Details

This study is part of the PCRWR’s quarterly monitoring (fourth quarter: October-December 2024) for 2024 in which 176 samples from 20 cities of Pakistan have been collected. Results were contrasted with bottled water criteria set down by the Pakistan Standards & Quality Control Authority (PSQCA).

PCRWR Director General Dr Hifza Rasheed confirmed that these 27 brands of bottled drinking water had been pronounced unfit for human consumption due to microbiological or chemical contamination.

 Regulatory Response

Although PCRWR tests and publishes its findings, the issuance of licenses and legal action against companies selling poor quality water is the responsibility of other regulatory bodies such as Pakistan Standardized Quality Control Authority (PSQCA).

Ashraf Player (Director Licensing, PSQCA) says that the companies that do not comply with hygiene standards are taken to three random inspections, and only then are companies convicted. If such violations continue, the company’s license is suspended and production is stopped.

Yet out of the PSQCA’s seven inspectors, only two are left to monitor the quality of bottled water in Karachi, while the rest of the country goes to waste, owing to the authority’s unfathomable numbers.